Good Neighbor Podcast: Auburn and Opelika

Ep.#99: Auburn Women's Physical Therapy and Wellness

• Susannah Hodges at Village Centre Press

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We share how women’s health physical therapy treats leaks, pain, prolapse, and postpartum recovery with evidence-based care and compassion. Marcy’s journey from athlete to specialist, the myth that “common is normal,” and how a family-first clinic design makes care accessible.

• what women’s health PT treats across the lifespan
• why leaks and pain are common but not normal
• practical ways PT restores bladder, bowel and sexual function
• support for pregnancy and postpartum recovery
• help for athletes, endometriosis and chronic pelvic pain
• clinic design that prioritizes privacy and ease
• lessons from building a mission-driven practice
• how to book without a physician referral




SPEAKER_00:

This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Suzanne Hodges.

SPEAKER_01:

Welcome. And with me is Marcy Crouch. She is the owner of the Auburn Women's Physical Therapy and Wellness. Welcome, Dr. Marcy.

SPEAKER_02:

Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to chat.

SPEAKER_01:

Tell me a little bit about your business. What is it that you do? I know physical therapy is kind of in the name, but you might have some things that you do special. So tell us about it.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, absolutely. So I am a physical therapist. I have my doctorate in PT and I went on to specialize in women's health. So my practice mainly focuses on women's health through the lifespan. I have a lot of pregnant and postpartum patients. We treat pelvic floor dysfunction. So any sort of issues after having a baby with bladder and bowel, pain with intimacy. I work a lot with new moms pregnant for the first time that want to go into their delivery, trying to avoid any of the muscular tearing and trauma. And then we also have a population of people who aren't moms who have pelvic floor dysfunction, endometriosis, long-term pelvic pain, gynecological cancer, things of that nature that are really affecting the function of the pelvic floor and their lifestyle.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh wow, that is uh pretty specific there, what you do. I love it. It's so many things that that um women have trouble with. And it's amazing that some physical therapy can really help in all of those areas.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, all of them. And pelvic floor dysfunction is very common. One in three women have some sort of pelv floor problem throughout their lifetime. So there's a huge population of women throughout their reproductive years who are dealing with problems with the pelvic floor. And I'm not just talking about um like people who have had babies, like we've discussed, but younger women too. Female athletes are noticing they're leaking urine with their sports, where I have a lot of younger women that are having difficulty with using tampons or having a gynecological exam. So this is something that's been going on for a long time and affects a lot of women, but it's just not talked about as much as, you know, like a sprained ankle or something of that nature.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, tell me a little bit about you. Tell me about your journey into physical therapy.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So um I'm from the West Coast. Uh, I grew up in California, went to San Diego State for my undergrad, and I was always very active. I grew up riding horses, I was a rower in college for a year, and then I did a little dabbled a little bit in triathlon after um undergrad. So I just lived a very active lifestyle and was kind of always getting hurt. Um, so my introduction to physical therapy happened when I was um actually in high school, but I didn't really know what I wanted to do in college. I started out as a business major. I thought I wanted to go into advertising, I didn't even know what that meant. And then I took one economist class and I was like, I don't understand. I don't know what it's like guns and butter, I don't get that. Um I had a I had an advisor in undergrad that was like, Oh, well, what do you think about kinesiology, which is you know, the study of movement. And I didn't really know what she was talking about. But once I started to do a couple um volunteer hours in a local clinic, it actually was a pediatric clinic that did physical therapy for children on horseback. So it was kind of like this really interesting melding of interest. Right. Um yeah, I fell in love with the profession, I fell in love with the connection that you make with your patients. I like that it's hands-on, I like that it's always changing and evolving, and um, it was something that was very appealing to me. So I kind of went that route and then got my doctorate at um University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Uh, did my residency in Dallas, Texas, right after. So this is really the only type of physical therapy that I do. Like I could maybe treat an ankle, but it's been 15 years.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, you've really specialized, and that's uh that's awesome. Absolutely. Well, you've been doing this a while. Tell me if you've come across any misconceptions that people might have about physical therapy in general or in your specifications there.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I think there's so many. Like, how much time do we have to talk about this? Go right ahead. Yeah, I know. I think the big misconception that I see all over the place, and I've worked and lived all over the country, I teach this all over. And the main one is that it's what happens with a pelvic floor and this common pelvic floor dysfunction that women have leaking urine, pain, prolapse, kind of all these things, is just part of being a woman. And that's just what happens as we age, and that's just normal because it is so common. But the reality is that it's not normal. And in fact, leaking urine is one of the number one reasons that women get admitted to nursing homes in their later years, and that starts when they have babies. That's right. It just continues to get worse and worse and worse. And usually it's changing a little bit, but generally speaking, it's just like, oh, we'll just wear a pad, or oh, that everybody leaks urine. Oh, that's just what happens. And the pad companies go from liners to diapers, right? Because they know that we're not treating it. So common and normal are not the same thing. And we have physical therapists really are the best people to be down there in that area, and we have the training and the knowledge and the wherewithal to really prevent public floor issues and to keep them at bay to where they're not getting to the point where you're getting up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night when you're um in your older years, fall and break a hip, go and you know, so it's like it really affects all these different levels of a woman's life, and these are the most important years. Um, so it's something that I'm obviously very passionate about, and I love it, and I love working with women and um common isn't normal, and it's never too late. Those are like two good ones.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, common isn't normal. That's a great thing to remember there. Just because it's it's commonly, you know, a problem doesn't mean you necess you I mean you don't have to endure it, right?

SPEAKER_02:

No, it's like if we had elbow pain or tennis elbow, we wouldn't fix it. Yeah, yeah, it wouldn't be like, oh, well, that's just what happens when you play tennis. Like, oh, I just don't know what to do about it. Like tough luck, you know.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Oh, wow. Why do we do that to ourselves? Yeah, that's so true. Well, what do you like to do for fun when you're not helping people in physical therapy?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, so I have um two boys. I have an eight-year-old and a 10-year-old, and they keep me very busy. Um, so I love being with them. They're into baseball right now, so we're like doing the whole baseball situation, which is great because I love baseball. So I'm like, yay! I'm glad they picked that sport. Um, I also ride horses, so this is that's something I did growing up, and I picked it back up again in 2018 when my youngest was one. And I ride here in Auburn. Um, and I love it so much. It's it's like the it's the thing that fills my cup. And I've I travel um quite a bit for work, and all of my family is on the West Coast, so I try to go see my sister and her family every couple months. So those I'm pretty busy. I have an online business also. Um, so I run that and the clinic, and I have just like my hand in kind of a lot of different places right now.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, well, that's awesome. Yeah. Well, part of the reason I do this podcast is to encourage people to go into business for themselves to follow that entrepreneurish uh dream. And um, as you know, when you own your own business, it's so exciting, but then you're gonna incur some hardships and some challenges, maybe some obstacles you have to overcome. So, what are some of those things that you had to overcome that made you a stronger person and your business a stronger business?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, it's a great question. I think, um, and I think a lot of women and moms can can relate to this, but really the time management piece for me was very challenging. Um, I started my online business in 2020, right, during the pandemic, um, because I couldn't go back into the clinic. And I, you know, and I wanted to do something that increased accessibility to this anyways. And then we moved here and the pandemic, and so I was like, ah, carpet dum, let's do it, you know.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, so many people uh did that.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I mean, yeah, I I I think that it like that was kind of a good thing that came from COVID. I think we were able, as as especially in the medical field, had to get creative about how we can still disseminate the information and help people without doing it, you know, in person. So so that was tough in the sense that you know, I had, let's see, we'll turned three in April. So I he was two. We had just moved here. I didn't really have a support network. Yeah, I was filming videos on my iPhone in the living room at like 2 a.m. You know, I was just like, yeah, you gotta do it. So I think some of the hardships with both the online business and um the clinic, because I I opened a clinic in Los Angeles and then I closed it to move here and then opened another one here. Okay. Opened here, yeah. Is just that one, I think the time management piece and understanding that you can't do everything all the time, especially with children, right? Like I the point of me going into business for myself was I wanted to be able to be available for the kids and and not be on somebody else's schedule. I wanted to be able to cancel an afternoon and you know go to a holiday performance or whatever. So, but there are only so many hours in the day. So, how do you balance that without like going crazy and also trying to think about the bottom line and being a good mom? So time management is tough, but sometimes you just have to kind of step back a little bit, get back to basics, understand that you have this drive and spirit to do all these wonderful things, but we can't do it all at once. And that was a lesson that I learned pretty hard with both businesses. Um, yes, and also knowing that the good times with the business, like when we have you know good months, we have good revenue, you will have the same amount of bad ones.

SPEAKER_01:

So it's like you have to be able to emotionally ride those up and downs because it's it is gonna happen. You're so right.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, tell me what's one thing that you wish people knew about Auburn women's physical therapy and wellness that they may not realize.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh, well, we have there's a couple things. Um our clinic, so we I have two therapists that work underneath me, and then I am the owner, and I'm the our clinic is the only one that is all women's health, all pelvic floor dysfunction. There are some other PTs here in the area that do a little bit of both. Um, however, our clinic, our clinicians are only seeing pelvic floors, pregnancy, postpartum. That's our specialty. I have um the WCS, which is the board certification in women's health. I'm the only one in the area um that has it and it's really specialized. And we are one-on-one care with people in a really cute office. It's not medical at all. It's an old, it's one of the old um millhouses in Opalika, like in Pepperill Parkway area. Oh, cool. Super cute, super homey. It's like not medical at all. You're one-on-one with a therapist in a room. Um, nothing is TMI. We talk about everything, and we really strive to provide an environment with expert-based evidence-based care, but also in a very personalized way that's going to meet you where you are. We're not a traditional physical therapy clinic where we're just like doing exercises and like everybody's out in the gym and there's dudes like sweating on you.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. It's like I and it's so overcrowded. No, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

And like stick figures. I mean, I have my patients, I tell them, bring your baby. I don't care if the baby screams for an hour. I will happily put that baby. I wear babies while we're doing physical therapy with their moms, I feed them while they're doing exercises. It's I don't want lack of child care or screaming babies be a reason why moms can't get what they need. And so we are really embodying that kind of village. We're all moms, we've all been there. It's completely fine. Like, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes, I love it. Yeah. Well, how can people find you? Um, and where can they um find your phone number, your address, those kind of things?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So if you just Google Auburn Women's Physical Therapy and Wellness, it should pop right up. Um, we also um my online business will also direct you to the clinic too. That's the downtherdoc.com. Um, and then our clinic website is Auburn Well Auburnwomen's PT.com. And that has the link to schedule. You can schedule directly from the website. You don't need a physician referral to see us. You can just book online. Um, we do everything online, super easy, super simple. Um, and that has our address. You'll you do a profile with the scheduling software, very easy. You'll get text reminders. It's like I wanted it to be the most simple possible.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes, yeah. I love it. Well, thank you so much for joining me. I have so enjoyed learning about you and your business. Uh, thank you so much for being with me today.

SPEAKER_02:

Of course. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_00:

Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast Auburn. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to gnpauburn.com. That's gnpauburn.com. Or call three three four four two nine seven four zero.